Gibbs praises old boss Obama on Libya, predicts re-election

Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today that President Barack Obama should be given a great deal of credit for the international effort in Libya that culminated in the death of former strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Gibbs, appearing in Chicago in advance of an evening speech at Saint Xavier University, also predicted a close contest for president in fall 2012 that would end in a second term for his former boss. Gibbs, however, declined to name a likely Republican challenger but did say Obama would have a “field day” against Mitt Romney.

Gibbs, who joined Obama in the spring of his successful 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race and followed him to the White House, said no one could have predicted the Arab Spring uprisings that shook the long-established leadership in the Middle East and North Africa.

“We’ve seen decades of social and political change in the Middle East in a 10-month period of time,” said Gibbs, who is currently advising Obama’s re-election campaign on an informal basis.

“The president deserves an enormous amount of credit for the way we’ve gone about executing the operations in Libya,” he said. “We proved that the United States does not have to put tens of thousands of boots on the ground, that we can build coalitions that spread…across a group of allies, yet still keep up the pressure on bad people like Gaddafi.”

Gibbs sought to counter complaints that the U.S. involvement in Libya, in joining with NATO forces, amounted to the nation entering an undeclared war, joining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. played a role in launching early missile strikes and later helped coordinate air support for other NATO countries supporting Libyan rebels.

“There’s always a lot of noise on either side about what he could or should be doing at that moment,” Gibbs said of Obama. “The president has a unique ability to see a little bit longer view, and I think today we’ve seen the fruits of having that longer view.”

As for next year’s election, Gibbs acknowledged “people are feeling deep frustration and anxiety and in many ways, they’re taking it out on elected officials on both sides of the aisle.” He said he thinks those feelings were “focused in on the president’s political health, more than they have even leaders in Congress or leaders in Congress from the other party.”

Gibbs said he believes at this point only a “very small number of people” are concerning themselves with the upcoming presidential election, and he thinks that Obama, whose administration he left early this year, is in a “good position politically” when compared to whoever the eventual Republican nominee will be.

“I think that for some period of time, Barack Obama has run against the ‘perfect person,’ ” Gibbs said. “Well, soon Barack Obama will run against the Republican nominee.”

The former White House spokesman declined to predict who might end up the GOP challenger. But he had harsh words for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination four years ago. Romney will be in Chicago for a fundraiser next week.

“If you had to think about it today, (the nominee) might be Mitt Romney who, I think, in sort of six years of being on the national stage, I don’t think has carried a consistent view on any single issue for all of those six years,” Gibbs said. “I think if you were running against somebody like Mitt Romney, you have in many ways a field day running Mitt Romney against Mitt Romney.”